Staff Q&A: If you could read only one book for the rest of your life, what would it be?

The Baltimore Book Festival is coming up this weekend, so we asked our staff about their worn and dog-eared favorites.

•••• The King James Bible. Four hundred years later, it’s still the most beautiful thing ever written in English. Runner-up: “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.” Luke Broadwater, managing editor, b

•••• “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” Alexander Solzhenitsyn. The oppression of reading only one book for the rest of my life would pale in comparison to the physical and psychic travails of being a prisoner in a Soviet gulag. Fun! Anne Tallent, editor, b

•••• “When You are Engulfed in Flames” by David Sedaris. If I can only have one, it better make me laugh. Wesley Case, reporter, b

•••• Pat Conroy’s “The Prince of Tides.” It helps that it’s long, but also that it’s unbearably beautiful and full of Southern-ness. Only drawback is that it would evoke memories of the Barbra Streisand movie. Jordan Bartel, assistant editor, b

•••• Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita.” You get bounced around by the rhythmic words, and then BAM! You’re somewhat in love with a pedophile. Happens to the best of us. Jan Diehm, designer, b

•••• Does the September issue of Vogue count? John-John Williams IV, reporter, The Baltimore Sun

•••• Does an iPhone count as a book? Mick Lee, Z104.3

•••• Can we make Marcel Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time” one book? I feel like it would take at least a decade to unravel half of what is hidden in there. And I could call myself the “world’s foremost Proust scholar” by the end. Olivia Hubert-Allen, community manager,The Baltimore Sun